Newspaper outs Bush nominee to Commerce post
By
LOU CHIBBARO, JR.
Friday, July 01, 2005
The White House and the
gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans have so far remained mum on a report by the New York Daily News that President
Bush has named a gay man to become an assistant secretary of commerce and head of an international trade office.
In a June 24 column, Daily News columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy reported that Israel “Izzy” Hernandez, 35, a White House adviser and personal aide to Bush during his term as Texas governor, came out to the president last year.
“One source tells us Hernandez waited until Bush was sworn in for a second term to formally tell him he is gay,” the columnists reported.
“By then, says a source, he’d brought his partner to several official events.”
A White House spokesperson did not return Voice calls.
During his first term as president, Bush appointed two openly gay men to head the White House AIDS office and named a gay foreign service officer as U.S. ambassador to Romania. The president also appointed several gay members to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and named a New York gay Republican activist and businessman to the National Commission on Fine Arts.
The gay appointments stopped as the 2004 presidential election approached, and Bush’s chief White House political adviser, Karl
Rove, helped orchestrate Bush’s support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage as part of a strategy to woo evangelical Christian voters.
If the Daily News report is true, Hernandez, a Texas native, becomes the first known gay appointee to a major post in the Bush administration since the election. He also becomes the administration’s first known gay Latino appointee.
Second Rove deputy to face gay questions
Prior to being nominated for the assistant secretary’s post, Hernandez worked from 2001 to May 2005 in the White House as an assistant to Rove as well as a deputy assistant to the president.
Hernandez is the second Rove deputy whose sexual orientation has become the subject of interest in the media.
Ken Mehlman, who worked as Rove’s No. 2 assistant at the White House and managed Bush’s re-election campaign, has refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation. Mehlman now chairs the Republican National Committee.
From 1995 to 1997, Hernandez served as a personal aide to then Gov. George W. Bush in Austin, Texas, according to a questionnaire Hernandez submitted to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, which is overseeing his confirmation.
According to news reports, he worked as Bush’s travel aide during Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and often provided the candidate with breath mints before speaking engagements, earning him the nickname “Altoid Boy” from the future president.
In his June 16 confirmation hearing, Hernandez told members of the Senate commerce panel that his sister, mother and father were present at the hearing but made no mention of a domestic partner.
In the questionnaire submitted to the committee in advance of his testimony, he listed his residence as a Falls Church, Va., townhouse that, according to tax records, is owned and occupied by another man, Albert A. Gallegos.
A male voice on the telephone answering machine of the home identified himself as “Al,” but messages left seeking comment about Hernandez’s nomination were not returned by Voice deadline.
Log Cabin stays mum
Christopher Barron, a spokesperson for Log Cabin Republicans, said the group had no comment on reports about Hernandez’s sexual orientation. In the past, Barron has said Log Cabin opposes the practice of “outing” public officials or other people.
Daily News columnists Rush and Molloy did not return a call seeking comment about their basis for claiming Hernandez was gay or “openly gay.”
Hernandez received a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1992 and a master’s degree in public administration from Texas A&M’s George Bush School of Government in 1999, he stated on the questionnaire.
Gay Republican activist Carl Schmid said Hernandez accompanied Bush during the 2000 campaign when Bush met with a dozen gay Republican leaders at his campaign office in Austin. The gay attendees became known as the “Austin 12.”
